Category Archives: Games

April 17, 1964. For most of us, that date probably means nothing. But, for lovers of the iconic Ford Mustang, it’s one that’s etched forever in their collective memories. Fifty years ago this Thursday, the automobile that started the so-called “pony car” craze arrived in showrooms across North America and, as the cliché goes, the rest is history.

CAA Magazine features the latest version of the Mustang on its current Spring 2014 cover with an in-depth story on this remarkable car’s popularity. They’re not the only lovers. Articles in numerous publications have appeared over the last month as admirers worldwide celebrate the history of this legendary vehicle.

In its first year, Ford had hoped to sell 100,000 Mustangs. During its launch week, CAA says four million people visited Ford showrooms and 22,000 placed their orders.

One year later, over 400,000 had been shipped and that number would swell to a million within 18 months of its introduction. To put that in context, CAA quotes Time Magazine, which said later, “By Detroit’s favourite yardstick – sales – the Ford Mustang is the most successful car ever introduced.”

When it was unveiled at the New York World’s Fair in 1964, advertisements heralded, “Unexpected look – unexpected choice – unexpected low price.” That price was just $2,985, a bargain even in 1964 terms.

Compared to similarly priced vehicles, the Mustang, with its European sports car-style long hood and short back end, was a beauty. CAA quotes former Autoweek magazine editor John Clor: “Economy cars of the day had nothing on them – rubber floor mats, Spartan interiors, dog-dish hubcaps,” he says. “The Mustang touched all the right buttons. Inside it was refined, and outside it looked special.”

Although the car is about as American as apple pie, CAA reports that it also has a unique Canadian connection, with the first two Mustangs ending up in our showrooms. Airline pilot Stanley Tucker of St. John’s, Newfoundland bought the very first unit.

The second Mustang that was shipped, a base six-cylinder model with just 110-horsepower, ended up going to Whitehorse. Ironically, despite the wild popularity of the car across North America, that unit sat unsold in the dealer’s showroom for a year before it was let go on a trade for a ’57 Plymouth. Apparently, Yukoners missed the memo on the pony car craze.

And a craze it was. The car appeared in the James Bond film Goldfinger in its first year and, along with numerous other movie, television and videogame appearances, will probably be best remembered in Steve McQueen’s Bullitt, which CAA says, “was, is and will always be the coolest Mustang ever.”

Like all great things, however, the car also had its ups and downs. It became big and bloated – and sales started to dip. Eventually, it was redesigned and reintroduced as the Mustang II in 1974, with mixed reviews.

Five years later, a European-styled model based on what was called the “Fox platform” was introduced, one that managed to hang on for 15 years.

In 1994, a fourth-generation model hit the streets sharing a design that attempted to recreate the vehicle’s pony car roots. Eleven years later, CAA says, it “went even further in that direction, embodying flamboyantly retro styling inside and out.”

Which brings us to the 2015 model, scheduled to arrive later this year as a perfect 50th birthday present for Mustang lovers everywhere. And I do mean everywhere, as it will be sold in parts of Asia and Europe for the first time, spreading the worldwide phenomenon even further.

CAA swoons: “The newest iteration of the pony car has a lower profile than its predecessor but still maintains an athletic stance. A shorter roof height and sculpted hood and door panels (for greater aerodynamics) add up to an overall taut sleeker design.” Three engine choices will be available, including a mind-blowing 5.0-litre V8 cranking out 420 horsepower.

In many ways, this iconic car has now come full circle, returning to its roots while looking forward to the future. “We crafted this car with the goal of creating a contemporary interpretation of Mustang – an American automotive icon that symbolizes optimism and freedom for millions of people around the world,” says Jim Farley, a Ford executive vice president.

Most certainly, there is some irony in those remarks. When it was introduced 50 years ago, the Ford Mustang was seen as a revolutionary sports car that would shake the rust off the boring, bland 1950’s and herald in a new generation. And it did. The 1960’s changed the world like no other decade in recent memory, setting us on a turbulent, uncharted course that has yet to be fully resolved.

For all of Ford’s hopefulness, when you look in the rearview mirror of a new Mustang, 1964 appears completely askew and further away than ever before. In rekindling memories of “optimism and freedom,” we’re conveniently forgetting about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy less than six months before the Mustang’s introduction, the escalation of the Vietnam War, race riots, and a rainbow of other world-changing events.

You can probably pick any point in history and fantasize about how it was a “better time.” In reality, the so-called “good old days,” were rarely particularly good and usually carried with them their own chorus of challenges and worries.

On this, the occasion of the Mustang’s 50th anniversary, perhaps our best bet is to use the nostalgia it creates to rekindle our own excitement about what’s important in our lives.

For auto lovers and the more than nine million people who’ve bought one, the original pony car may be just the ticket to help reignite their fire. “Ford Mustang inspires passion like no other car,” says Raj Nair, a Ford group vice president. “The visceral look, sound and performance of Mustang resonates with people, even if they’ve never driven one. Mustang is definitely more than just a car – it is the heart and soul of Ford.”

What fuels your heart and soul? What does it take to re-fire your passion? And how will you celebrate that re-ignition? Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.

“No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks,” the great philosopher Alice Cooper once wrote. A recent experience where I watched a large family in a restaurant spend the majority of their meal cruising their smartphones led me to wonder how students in the digital age are managing to learn in a traditional school environment – when so much of their lives revolve around their electronic devices.

With the question of new teaching methods picking at my brain, I started searching for answers on the Internet. And, as so often happens, I ended up finding out much more than I ever wanted to know in the first place.

In the case of my search for teaching trends in the digital age, I stumbled upon a professor from the UK named Steve Wheeler. The educator recently wrote a three-piece series that commented on yet another article about three new emerging teaching trends. That article was written by Daniel S. Christian, an information technology instructor in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Now you see what I mean about already discovering more than I really wanted to know.

According to his original thesis, Christian said he believes that new teaching methods are being driven directly by the upsurge in online activity and identifies three key changes to support his argument.

The first trend is “a move to opening up learning, making it more accessible and flexible.” Christian says, “The classroom is no longer the unique centre of learning, based on information delivery through a lecture.”

Wheeler comments on Christian’s first trend by saying that this has been happening for at least the last decade. Classroom centred learning may be cost effective in terms of having a teacher deliver lessons in front of the class, allowing the students to reflect on what they might have learned and then testing them afterwards. But, is it still effective? With new technology, Wheeler says, learning can now take place anywhere and, more importantly, at the pace of each individual learner.

Of course, by taking teaching out of the classroom, we’re also introducing a whole series of other issues. As Wheeler asks, “Will there be a divide between learning that continues to rely on traditional learning spaces, compared to learning that takes place largely outside the walls of the traditional classroom? Moreover, if there is such a divide, will it be delineated by its cost effectiveness, its conceptual differences, or its pedagogical impact?”

Christian’s second trend involves “an increased sharing of power between the professor and the learner.” He continues: “This is manifest as a changing professorial role, towards more support and negotiation over content and methods, and a focus on developing and supporting learner autonomy.

“On the student side, this can mean an emphasis on learners supporting each other through new social media, peer assessment, discussion groups, even online study groups but with guidance, support and feedback from content experts.”

Wheeler wonders if teachers will be willing to voluntarily relinquish their position as the sole instructors in the classroom and become “co-learners.” He believes, “Some would feel justified in jealously protecting their positions as acknowledged experts and resist any calls to take a sideways step and let their students lead. Knowledge is power, and holding that position of power can be seductive.”

On the flip side, will students be willing to let their teachers into their personal digital world? “They are intimately familiar with the functionality of their devices, knowing how to use them to connect to, create and organize content. They are adept at connecting to their friends and peers too, but will they be willing to power share with their professors, take on greater autonomy and assume more responsibility to direct their own learning in the future?” wonders Wheeler.

Christian’s final changing trend in teaching centres around “an increased use of technology not only to deliver teaching, but also to support and assist students and to provide new forms of student assessment.”

Wheeler says this issue may be the stickiest of all, because learning and assessment are inseparable in education. Therefore, how do you reconcile digital learning methods with traditional grading systems? Wheelers reasons, “If students are relying increasingly on digital technology to connect them with content, peers and tutors, and to facilitate new, distributed forms of learning, then we should endeavour to assess the learning they achieve in a relevant manner.”

In Wheeler’s own classrooms, he often frees students from the confines of paper-based essays and allows them to submit videos, blogs and other forms of assignments. But how do you grade one form against another? In Wheeler’s case, he tries to determine equivalencies in effort, the sequencing of content and how well his students use the different capabilities of each technology. That’s a long, long way from having students take multiple-choice exams – and one that seems ripe for disagreements.

Whether we agree with Wheeler’s interpretation of Christian’s new trends or not, there can’t be any doubt that the way we teach our children is undergoing an extraordinary change because of the light-speed advancements happening in digital technology.

To return to Alice Cooper’s philosophical treatise on education: “Well, we got no choice/All the girls and boys/Makin’ all that noise/’Cause they found new toys.” New toys, for sure. And we’d better start thinking of more productive ways to make use of those toys if we intend to keep pace with the way we educate our children. If not, Mr. Cooper’s prediction that “School’s out forever” will almost certainly become increasingly true.

Years and years ago, Hasbro, one of the world’s largest toy and board game manufacturers, ran a series of television commercials promoting something called “Family Game Night.” At the time, I remember thinking what a cheesy way it was to pump up their fading board games like Monopoly, Clue, Life and Scrabble. Boy, was I wrong. Although the company has gone through some rough patches over the past few years, laying off large numbers of its American workers, the products it sells continue to remain popular.

Not only that, the company has also released four collections of Family Game Night video games for PlayStation, Wii and Xbox. On top of that, the idea was even spun off into a popular U.S. television series that has been running on The Hub (formerly Discovery Kids) for the past three seasons.

If you’ve forgotten the original concept, the idea was to gather your family around the table on one specific night each week to play board games. It sounds like something created by a desperate advertising company that had run out of new ideas to get people interested in games they probably already owned and that were sitting in the back of some dusty closet.

As hokey as the premise might be, over the past few years our family has actually gotten into the idea, although our game nights only occur maybe six times a year when the stars align perfectly and we manage to get a few of us in the same house together for an evening. That’s a rare event when your kids have their own lives and are all over the country doing their thing. Strangely enough, however, it’s now one of the events we enjoy most whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Family Nights at our household aren’t necessarily for the faint of heart. Things can get a little weird, especially as the evening drags on. Guests are sometimes involved – friends and other relatives – and that can take the bizarreness to some pretty epic levels. At times, the “game playing” can become an almost forgotten part of the actual Game Night, as the conversations and level of humour degenerate into some very strange territories. Usually, the whole event ends up imploding at some ungodly hour as we half-heartedly agree to call it a night.

In any case, it’s one of the few excuses we have to spend time together, other than the occasional mealtime or birthday celebration. It’s a crazy, busy world we all live in, one where planning get-togethers takes a backseat to all the other aspects of our lives. Nonetheless, it’s gratifying to know that holding one of these sporadic Family Game Nights can instantly re-bond us, giving us a chance to catch up on recent events, share some laughs and forget about all the other things that occupy our lives.

Unfortunately for Hasbro, I’m not sure many of the games we play actually come from any of their numerous companies, which include Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley, but they certainly deserve some credit for the original idea, I suppose. On the other hand, I’m sure we’d be having these Family Game Nights even if some guy on Madison Avenue had never pitched that particular advertising idea to Hasbro almost 15 years ago.

If you’ve never had your own Family Game Night, why not give it a try? Dust off some of those old games you never thought you’d use again – or pick up something new and different. You might discover it’s just the thing to bring your family a little closer together, even if it’s just for one night. Roll the dice and let the games begin